Blue Origin, a spacecraft startup owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, carried out an unmanned maiden test flight of its New Shepard suborbital rocket Wednesday, the company revealed early Thursday.
A dramatic video posted on the Blue Origin website showed the squat rocket being erected on a launch platform at the company's west Texas development facility followed by a brief countdown -- with Bezos looking on -- then a smooth liftoff and a vertical climb to an altitude of 58 miles.
At that point, the dummy crew capsule separated from its booster and completed a parachute descent to Earth.
"Our 110,000 pound thrust liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen BE-3 engine worked flawlessly, powering New Shepard through Mach 3 to its planned test altitude of 307,000 feet," Bezos said in a blog post. "The in-space separation of the crew capsule from the propulsion module was perfect. Any astronauts on board would have had a very nice journey into space and a smooth return."
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